I just wanted to make a section on here, for those of us that have the demo from Automations main site, to leave some tips and tricks on engine building. I currently own the free demo/no pre-order and I have found a few tips of my own.

Compression seems to be everything and a lot of the time I find adjusting the compression up or down can drastically change your engines performance. Slide it up and down a few times to find the best configuration for what your after.

Also, ignore what the sliders say about how higher=more power if your engine is not properlly calibrated then you could have the settings way to high and end up having no power because of it.

Anyway here is a link to the demo below as well as their main site. The demo link is on the right hand site.

Best thing to do is play the tutorials. If you don't understand what something does then experiment with it.

Few tips on engine building:

I find it easier to build power last when making an engine with strict requirements but what works for me may not work for you.

If you're simply building power more displacement, compression, bigger cams, richer air/fuel ratio, and advanced timing can all increase power to a certain extent. If you are experiencing engine knock problems try adjusting you're air/fuel ratio if you're not worried about emissions and fuel economy. A/F ratio is a way to deal with low octane (RON) fuels as it lowers RON allowing you to increase compression or advance timing.

Better throttle response can be achieved by advanced timing and richer A/F ratios. There are probably other ways but so far those are the two main ways I have found.

Don't forget to adjust the exhaust. Somtimes less airflow thru the exhaust can be better.

I actually pre-ordered the game and the added V8s and Inline 6 engines are awesome. Haven't been able to beat any of the insane or brutal challenges yet but I have silver medals on all other challeges with 2 golds on 2 of the hard challenges.

@ exhaust: the engine produces a certain amount of gases each combustion and then pushes that into the exhaust.So these gases have a velocity away from the engine, when the cylinder that just pushed them out closes its valve.The gases are now still moving away from the engine, but no new gases take their place, which creates an area of low pressure.This low pressure either slows the gases down and tries to pull them back towards the engine, or if u have optimised the exhaust, grabs the gases from the next cylinder that just opened its valve, meaning the engine works less on pushing, since part of the gases gets pulled out of it by physics.

So why not always max. diameter? Volume of gases passing a fixed point each second = diameter of the tube*velocity of the gasesMeaning: High diameter causes low velocity, and the low pressure has an easier time pulling the gases back, and the engine has to do all the work in pushing new gases into the exhaust.

Smaller diameter equals higher velocity, prolonging the existence of the low pressure area and helping the engine.

Too small of a diameter means the engine has to work harder getting the gases into the exhaust regardsless of the low pressure area.

ingame i found that 1 or 2 clicks above the biggest diameter decreasing the power is opt.

JUst by fiddling with options I was able to discover a lot. Don't forget that what parts you use in the construction can affect the RON, and the right part can enable you to drastically up your compression and timing for a high powered engine, and the same goes for RPM.